Is formal diningroom a must in your dream house?

[zhuzhu]

Since we have been talking a lot of houses lately, I want to ask if a formal dining is really that important in your life. I grew up in a metropolitan city where apartments are the norm. Formal dining room that can sit more than 6 is a luxury, very uncommon.

Here in SOCal all the house have a designated area for formal dining, so does our house. However I find the space to be wasteful as hosting large dinner parties is simply not my cup of tea. I have converted the space into a home for my grand piano, and just use the breakfast nook as eating area.

Would you have insisted on a house with a nice, sizable formal dining room (or area) even if you KNOW you don''t host dinner parties? What are the benefits of having it if you don''t use it?

Thanks~!

 

[Pandora II]

Date: 5/5/2009 4:49:34 AM
Author:zhuzhu
Since we have been talking a lot of houses lately, I want to ask if a formal dining is really that important in your life. I grew up in a metropolitan city where apartments are the norm. Formal dining room that can sit more than 6 is a luxury, very uncommon.

Here in SOCal all the house have a designated area for formal dining, so does our house. However I find the space to be wasteful as hosting large dinner parties is simply not my cup of tea. I have converted the space into a home for my grand piano, and just use the breakfast nook as eating area.

Would you have insisted on a house with a nice, sizable formal dining room (or area) even if you KNOW you don''t host dinner parties? What are the benefits of having it if you don''t use it?

Thanks~!

My parents and in-laws have both always had formal dining-rooms and I do miss not having one.

However, living in London, unless we win the lottery, I''m unlikely to ever get one.

 

[whitby_2773]

hi zhuzhu

when i''ve bought houses in the past - and i''m on number 13 right now i think (tho i''d have to go back and count to be sure!) i always say the same thing to the realtor - in this order: i want a roomy master bedroom, i dont care about multiple bathrooms, i must have a useable kitchen and a large formal dining room.

we entertain quite a lot, both with formal dinners and parties, so a formal dining room is essential for us. i also like doing nice dinners for my husband and i and, since i''ve collected china since i was a little girl, i have a huge amount of all sorts of entertaining accoutrement, and i enjoy getting it out and using it regularly.

but that''s just me.

if i didn''t do that, i dont think i''d dedicate such a large square footage of my home to it, and as most formal dining rooms are quite central, i can imagine yours would look fabulous with a grand piano in it, zhuzhu! i think it''s a good idea to have SOMEwhere to sit and eat meals - as too many people these days seem not to know how to set a table, handle cutlery when they go out, or eat from anything other than their knees! i think it''s also good for fostering conversation.

but a casual eating area can do this just as well, so if entertaining and cooking is not your thing, i would have no qualms in getting rid of a formal dining room.

are you looking at real estate, zhuzhu?

 

[Tuckins1]

No. I would never use it.

 

[whitby_2773]

Pandora -

are you in the inner city? my husband and i used to live in epsom (with formal dining room! lol) but we had friends in inner london and we Could. Not. BELIEVE. the price of real estate there!! rents were breath taking. i cant even imagine the sort of rent on a property with a large formal dining room and those sorts of proportions; when all''s said and done, a formal dining room, if you also have an eating nook or something similar, is largely unused spare 90% of the time. just cant afford that in london...

 

[zhuzhu]

Good morning, my UK friends!

No I am not looking for another house. We are really happy with the house we bought last year. I was just curious as to how practical it is to reserve that large area for "once in a while" pleasure of being host/hostess. If I move my piano to the family room and set up a dinner table there, all it will be doing is collecting dust and becoming cats'' napping bed.

 

[MishB]

What I don''t need is an IN-formal dining room. DH and I usually eat in the living room. Naughty..

We do love dinner parties though, and there is my tea parties. Our dining room is open plan with the kitchen, and I really hate this. I hate not being able to make a big mess while cooking because it will be seen from the table, and also to have guests watching everything I do while putting on finishing touches (dropping food on the floor, that sort of thing

)

We''re hoping to buy another house by the end of the year and I definitely want the dining room separate from the kitchen.

 

[Pandora II]

Date: 5/5/2009 6:11:28 AM
Author: whitby_2773
Pandora -

are you in the inner city? my husband and i used to live in epsom (with formal dining room! lol) but we had friends in inner london and we Could. Not. BELIEVE. the price of real estate there!! rents were breath taking. i cant even imagine the sort of rent on a property with a large formal dining room and those sorts of proportions; when all's said and done, a formal dining room, if you also have an eating nook or something similar, is largely unused spare 90% of the time. just cant afford that in london...

Zone 1, just south of the river but loads of parks etc so doesn't feel like 'inner city' at all - we are VERY lucky in that our sitting room is 17ft by 9ft (massive by central London standards) so we have space for a formal dining table that seats 6 at one end (and accumulates large piles of paper the rest of the time...)

House prices are excruciating - you need over £300k for a decent 2 bed flat on a council estate, you'd need at least a ballpark £2million plus for something big enough for a 'proper' dining room in Zone 1 (and I'm talking Vauxhall not Belgravia...

.) I have a friend who is renting a 4 bed Victorian terrace in Clapham and his rent is around £2.2k a month (not including bills, council tax etc...

)

Prices are dropping a bit in the centre (a lot outside the centre), but without a 40% deposit there are no decent mortgages out there, and as a result rents are going up - DH and I were incredibly fortunate as we remortgaged one property last year and rented it out and bought the current one a few months later and thanks to our amazing IFA got the last decent mortgages in Britain with very low Bank of England base rate trackers on both. Even so, it still makes me feel sick when I think what our mortgage debt looks like!

Epsom is lovely!

ETA: My main hatred in London is that so many flats have 'open plan living' which is all very well in huge properties, but having a wall of the sitting room as the kitchen is not my thing. I only look at properties with a separate kitchen...

 

[babysteps]

For me, yes - formal, but NOT stuffy!! I had an overly formal, ''don''t touch that!'' type dining room growing up that we never used and I didn''t like it. We have a dedicated DR now in our home but I am really trying to make it friendly and comfy - still looking for the perfect table and chairs (I want the table LONG but without leaves, comfortable chairs) but until the budget allows we are working with the old set. My favorite thing is that there is a fireplace in the room and last year I converted it to gas, so when we want to eat in there we just flip it on

 

[whitby_2773]

pandora -

ouch! re prices. that''s exactly how i remember it. you sound like you have the house thing pretty well stitched up - but one decorating tip you might find helpful...

to expand the look of a room, replace any doors off your living room with glass doors - it breaks up the walls and opens up the look of the area. even if you put sheer curtains on the other side of the door for privacy (for instance if the door leads to a bedroom) it still leads the eye and gives the impression of space, rather than an absolute barrier. i''ve seen this used a number of times very effectively - ad it adds a lot of charm, too. just a suggestion if you''re feeling hemmed in.

epsom was great! we lived in a terrace for some years - 3 storeys high - 18'' wide. we had a fully walled, stone floor courtyard out the back which my kitchen opened to through french doors and it had stone flower boxes built into it which i had filled with herbs, roses and lavender. it was so pretty! out the front was a nice sized garden - same width - 18'' - but twice as deep - ie 36'' x 18''. i had a beautiful weeping silver birch and all sorts of flowers with fences covered with honeysuckle. how english is that?!

the dining room (so i have SOME justification for this shameless threadjack - sorry zhuzhu!!) had an open fireplace and overlooked the courtyard also. i loved it there - absolutely loved it. i just needed about 5 times the wardrobe space!

i miss london - and i REALLY miss penhaligons!

 

[Lilac]

I don''t think I would need a HUGE dining room (I''ve been to some houses where they have tables that seat around 20-25 people) - I can''t see myself ever really making such a large dinner party. But I would like a dining room that could fit maybe 8-10 people in my house one day.

 

[Pandora II]

Date: 5/5/2009 7:50:30 AM
Author: whitby_2773
pandora -

ouch! re prices. that''s exactly how i remember it. you sound like you have the house thing pretty well stitched up - but one decorating tip you might find helpful...

to expand the look of a room, replace any doors off your living room with glass doors - it breaks up the walls and opens up the look of the area. even if you put sheer curtains on the other side of the door for privacy (for instance if the door leads to a bedroom) it still leads the eye and gives the impression of space, rather than an absolute barrier. i''ve seen this used a number of times very effectively - ad it adds a lot of charm, too. just a suggestion if you''re feeling hemmed in.

epsom was great! we lived in a terrace for some years - 3 storeys high - 18'' wide. we had a fully walled, stone floor courtyard out the back which my kitchen opened to through french doors and it had stone flower boxes built into it which i had filled with herbs, roses and lavender. it was so pretty! out the front was a nice sized garden - same width - 18'' - but twice as deep - ie 36'' x 18''. i had a beautiful weeping silver birch and all sorts of flowers with fences covered with honeysuckle. how english is that?!

the dining room (so i have SOME justification for this shameless threadjack - sorry zhuzhu!!) had an open fireplace and overlooked the courtyard also. i loved it there - absolutely loved it. i just needed about 5 times the wardrobe space!

i miss london - and i REALLY miss penhaligons!

Sounds gorgeous, especially the fireplace in the dining room (I so like them in rooms as it makes such a definite focal point).

I have roses, lavender, herbs and honeysuckle on our terrace as well - definately an English thing I think (next plan is a heritage espalier apple-tree to block out the neighbours and so I can have 3 types of apple on one tree!)

The glass door idea is really good - sadly we are leaseholders (like 99.9% of Londoners), so everything has to be approved (and fees paid) by the freeholder and ours is a serious PITA. The previous owners put in wooden flooring which was a breach of the lease and we have been trying to get written permission for it for months now. I hate the way you pay a fortune for a property here and even if you ''own'' it for 150 years, you still have to get permission to do any work at all even internally. We even had to pay a fee to be allowed to keep my pythons and hedgehogs! Grrrrr.

Try ebay for Penhaligons - I adore their bottles, so elegant! Where are you living now - Australia? I''m I right in thinking you are married to a Brit, or are you the Brit married to the Australian????

 

[risingsun]

I love our formal dining room. It's not huge, but it's lovely. I like oriental rugs and Chippendale furniture and eclectic pieces in the mix. Even if it's just for DH and me, on occasion, it's a nice place to be for us. Necessary, perhaps not. Desirable, yes.

 

[Ara Ann]

I think it''s GREAT to repurpose the original intent for certain rooms!! It only makes sense to use the rooms that suit the owner''s lifestyle!

We have a dining room, but we have ''re-purposed'' some of the rooms on our main floor to suit our lifestyle too. Our floor plan is very traditional, we have an office/library on one side of the foyer, living room with a dining room off of it to the left of the foyer, and a kitchen with an eating are that is open to a family room, across the back of the house. We had used the rooms as they were intended, the first couple of years we lived here, but when DH started working from home, he turned our front library into his home office, which displaced ME and my computer

(not good for me, LOL)...since the designated dining room was too small to have large furniture or seat many people comfortably (any number over 8 would be a tight fit), we converted the DR into our library, with my computer and desk and made the living room a large dining room...it''s not ''froo-froo'' formal, but it works great for holidays when we have at least 15 people to dinner, we all fit in one room comfortably and we are away from the mess in the kitchen. We also use the dining room for game playing, homework and even on nights where we want to be away from the kitchen (I also like the privacy and feeling apart from the ''mess'' in the kitchen, at least for a little while, LOL). So it does get used, probably more now that it is a dining room, than if it had been left as a formal living room!

So do what you want and need to do with the space you have! And enjoy your home!

 

[whitby_2773]

Date: 5/5/2009 8:07:13 AM
Author: Pandora II

Date: 5/5/2009 7:50:30 AM

Author: whitby_2773

pandora -


ouch! re prices. that''s exactly how i remember it. you sound like you have the house thing pretty well stitched up - but one decorating tip you might find helpful...


to expand the look of a room, replace any doors off your living room with glass doors - it breaks up the walls and opens up the look of the area. even if you put sheer curtains on the other side of the door for privacy (for instance if the door leads to a bedroom) it still leads the eye and gives the impression of space, rather than an absolute barrier. i''ve seen this used a number of times very effectively - ad it adds a lot of charm, too. just a suggestion if you''re feeling hemmed in.


epsom was great! we lived in a terrace for some years - 3 storeys high - 18'' wide. we had a fully walled, stone floor courtyard out the back which my kitchen opened to through french doors and it had stone flower boxes built into it which i had filled with herbs, roses and lavender. it was so pretty! out the front was a nice sized garden - same width - 18'' - but twice as deep - ie 36'' x 18''. i had a beautiful weeping silver birch and all sorts of flowers with fences covered with honeysuckle. how english is that?!


the dining room (so i have SOME justification for this shameless threadjack - sorry zhuzhu!!) had an open fireplace and overlooked the courtyard also. i loved it there - absolutely loved it. i just needed about 5 times the wardrobe space!


i miss london - and i REALLY miss penhaligons!

Sounds gorgeous, especially the fireplace in the dining room (I so like them in rooms as it makes such a definite focal point).


I have roses, lavender, herbs and honeysuckle on our terrace as well - definately an English thing I think (next plan is a heritage espalier apple-tree to block out the neighbours and so I can have 3 types of apple on one tree!)


The glass door idea is really good - sadly we are leaseholders (like 99.9% of Londoners), so everything has to be approved (and fees paid) by the freeholder and ours is a serious PITA. The previous owners put in wooden flooring which was a breach of the lease and we have been trying to get written permission for it for months now. I hate the way you pay a fortune for a property here and even if you ''own'' it for 150 years, you still have to get permission to do any work at all even internally. We even had to pay a fee to be allowed to keep my pythons and hedgehogs! Grrrrr.


Try ebay for Penhaligons - I adore their bottles, so elegant! Where are you living now - Australia? I''m I right in thinking you are married to a Brit, or are you the Brit married to the Australian????

espalier apple tree - perfect! how beautiful! i love espalier anything.

some body corporates are just painful. i lived in one building which was declared by the national trust. talk about a nightmare! they used to impress upon us ALL the time that all we owned was the air and our own personal effects. anything done to the building had to be agreed upon. sadly, they didn''t get on (a case of too much money, not enough manners) so anything was a struggle. good luck with your floor!

i''m an australian, married to an australian, now living in NY after living in epsom and previously portsmouth. this is my 10th year away from home. we bought a house here some years ago and intend to stay here for more years yet, but will go home to australia to retire eventually. we have a fabulous DINING ROOM (just to be vaguely relevant!) here, with a big bay window which overlooks our walled back yard; we''ve recently had about half of it paved with cobblestones called...wait for this...''Stonehenge'' - pretntious much?? ooy!

your terrace sounds fabulous! and it really must be an english thing!

and i just got off the phone to penhaligon''s covent garden store - they''ve done away with most of the line of the fragrance i use (victorian posy). only the eau de toilette is left.

thanks for the ebay tip - will see what i can scrounge up there.

have a good afternoon and evening, pandora

 

[Steel]

It was, until we decided to have kids. Now it will probably be a bedroom.

 

[Italiahaircolor]

In our next home, a formal dining space will be very important. I love to host, and it''s something I really enjoy doing it. In our current space, we''re so limited that everything is like "mini"...but we make do. We have an eat-in kitchen which is maybe 12 steps from what could have been a "formal" dining space...so... we actually converted what is technically the formal dining room (according to blueprints) into a large "lounge" space with bookshelf lined walls and comfortable sail cloth chairs. We removed the light which would have anchored a table, and installed a duel fan (two fans with one common light). It changed the feel completely.

Sometimes I regret not getting a big table ... but I think depending on how you live, you make the space your own.

 

[D&T]

No necessarily, as long as the kitchen is open to an informal space that can hold a nice size dining table to sit at least 8 with some extra room to spare, the house we have right now, has a formal dining (we don't use it) and a small little breakfast nook (this is where we eat most of the time anyways, but barely holds our dining table that seats only 4

and of course the high chair

 

[Elmorton]

Formal dining room or at least a separate dining room is a must - I''m not a fan of an eat-in kitchen at all. I grew up in a split-level (dining room was in an area between kitchen and living room, all flowed together), and I never really liked that house. We pretty much never ate meals at the table, and I think the placement of the table (smack dab middle of everything) had a lot to do with it.

When DH and I started renting a house with a formal dining room, we ate all the meals there - and this is when the dining room became a must to me. I want to eat somewhere where I''m not staring at the disorder of the kitchen that''s been cooked in or where a TV is visible. I think meals should be distraction-free so a person can focus on conversation and the food.

Our current house has an open floor plan that is divided by partial walls and this is OK I guess, but I do notice we end up carrying meals to the TV a lot more often. In our next house, we''ll probably still want to be in a 75-100 year old home, so the dining room will probably be in a separate room again, as they typically are in a slightly larger house from that era.

 

[Dancing Fire]

how do i know if we have a formal dining room?

we do have a dining table that seats 8. how many times had we sat down to have dinner on that table? 0.

how many times had we sat down on the sofa in our living room? 0

if i posted a pic of our dining and living area all of you will be sick. junks all over the area !!

 

[LaurenThePartier]

Nope, my whole first floor is an open concept, and our dining room is adjacent to our kitchen/living room area. I don''t know, it just feels more comfortable and relaxed that way to me.

Perhaps when I''m older and need room for 20 every Christmas, I might see the value in a LARGE formal dining room.

 

[elrohwen]

I would want a dining room that could fit a normal sized table for 8-10 people or so, but no more than that. I''m actually kind of anti-eat-in-kitchen. I don''t mind islands and things like that, but I don''t like having a big table in the kitchen itself (though a little breakfast nook could be cool). Having it right next to the kitchen with kind of an open floor plan is perfect for me because I''m not eating *in* the kitchen (I like that sense of separation), but it''s convenient for bringing food out and entertaining. I guess what I described isn''t the traditional formal dining room per se, but somewhat of a cross between an eat-in kitchen and a formal dining room.

 

[LadyBlue]

I live in a small apartment, I don''t know if one day I would like a house, but for sure I want a table that fits at least 6 people

, It just drive my crazy to have gets and dont fit on the table.

 

[musey]

Nope, not in the least!

 

[princesss]

My dream house belongs in my dream life, in which we are fabulously weathy and entertain frequently. So yes, in that life, it''s a must.

In my real life, I don''t really care. I like open floor plans, so as long as I have someplace to put a table big enough to entertain around, I''m fine.

 

[Burk]

We''re in the process of building a house right now and the "formal dining" area will be the play room for the kids. Our kitchen is open to the family room with a large eat-in area (large enough to have our table set for at least 10) so we''ll use that when we entertain.

 

[Camille]

Formal dining space is very important to us, If we ever move [again] I''d prob need a larger dinning space, our familiy is large and very traditional, our table can easily sit 12 people, we also keep all serving dishes, china and fancier cutery in there.

 

[Shoopy]

I don''t know about a formal dining room but I do like a dining room separate from the kitchen. I don''t like to eat in the kitchen. I like clean spaces before I eat. My mother has a dining room as well as a nice size table (holds 5) in the kitchen. Before I eat, I feel the need to clean the entire kitchen (wash dishes, sweep, mop, etc.) So, even though I know I won''t host dinner parties I would still prefer a separate space.

 

[snlee]

If the kitchen doesn''t have room for a table then a dining room is a must. Even if we had an eat in kitchen it probably wouldn''t be able to fit more than 5 people. I would like a dining room large enough for at least 10 people so we can entertain in the future.

 

[gwendolyn]

In my DREAM house? Absolutely! My dream house has a room for almost everything!

In a real house, no, although I want the kitchen to be big enough to have a table fit in it if there''s no dining room. Our current place (flat in outer London) has room in the living room for a table, and I''m not crazy about the living room/eatery combo. But no, it''s not a necessity.